Pentium processor executes instructions in five stages. This staging, or pipelining, allows the processor to overlap multiple instructions so that it takes less time to execute two instructions in a row.

The Pentium processor fetches the branch target instruction before it executes the branch instruction.

The Pentium processor has two separate 8-kilobyte (KB) caches on chip, one for instructions and one for data. It allows the Pentium processor to fetch data and instructions from the cache simultaneously.

When data is modified, only the data in the cache is changed. Memory data is changed only when the Pentium processor replaces the modified data in the cache with a different set of data

The Pentium processor has been optimized to run critical instructions in fewer clock cycles than the 80486 processor.